For various reasons, the ability to create SWORD modules for Bible applications is a bit of a holy grail for me. First, if a piece of software will allow you to create your own modules you essentially have the makings of a Bible translation software. Second, you can create your own modules with specialized commentary or outlines that will then scroll along with the other Bible versions you are looking at.
Unfortunately, none of the currently available programs are able to do this very well. The best program is The Word which has a built in function called My Verse Notes. The downside of this function is that there doesn’t seem to be any way to export these notes. Also, and this is a problem for all the software I’ve looked at so far, you can only make comments on a single verse rather than an entire passage or chapter. http://www.theword.gr/ (Note: the website claims you can make notes on entire passages and chapters so there must be something I’m missing.)
Xiphos (formerly GnomeBible) does promise to have the ability to export and share modules in the future. But it also only allows comments by verse. http://xiphos.org/
The developers of BPible say that they are working on an editing window for creating modules. http://bpbible.com/
I like the interface of BibleTime but it doesn’t have any notes function at this point. http://sourceforge.net/projects/bibletime/
BibleTime and Xiphos have the advantage of being cross-platform and I’ve used them both on Windows and Ubuntu.
As someone who has used Paratext for years, the idea of creating your own notes module (shadow file) seems like such a simple thing to do. Obviously I’m not a programmer so I’ll just wait in hopes that over time one of these software packages will offer the right kind of notes function.
If user SWORD modules were easy to create they would open up the possibility of custom commentaries, Bible studies and even complete Bible translations using a free program that is accessible to the masses rather than the expensive packages like Logos and Accordance that currently exist.
